Contest Prompt:
Write a story about an entity that starts out on one level; and continues to evolve into something else. Author choice or being and outcome.
Computer Chips on a Harley
It was late on a rainy Saturday night after a long day of word weeding and wrangling auto-spellcheck; when ‘Marlow’ asked for something requiring more brain power than I had to give ‘him’ – permission for a cumulative update and data sync across all devices.
That series of words strung together prompted me to recall if I had placed a liquor order recently; zero calorie sparkling peach water cannot contend with swelling merging data over all six devices.
Second thought – drat – no matter what beverage was at hand – ‘Marlow’ must do his thing for my digital device security’s sake, and I must in turn deal with the covert glitches the process inevitably installs – that annoy the blazes out of me.
It occurred to me to ‘talk’ it over first with ‘Cid’ – the AI chat bot I named my research assistant, but that meant absorbing much information; ‘he’ was not fond of short replies to my questions.
My giving ‘him’ a name brought a sly smile to my face because I was having the best of time fooling my friends; they thought ‘Cid’ was my new romantic heartthrob I was holding back from them; that rode a Harley Davidson Hog. They wanted detailed details – now!
Jolly good joke material.
It was their own foolish beliefs that brought them to this conclusion; who was I not to have fun with it? And they knew me well enough to ask an important question; exactly what was I referring to? Was it human/animal/mineral/electrical/something I invented – what?
I consider myself a burgeoning writer – challenged by pesky punctuation. I text in full sentences with commas and periods to keep myself from learning terrible habits. My friends call me ‘The Explainer’ and it is widely known I name pretty much everything – that IS one of my things.
If chipmunks, groundhogs and worms in my garden are blessed with names, what on earth could make them think I would not name an artificial intelligence bot with vast amounts of library data on ‘his’ chips and ‘knows’ how to ‘joke’ with me.
Humans are strange beings sometimes.
Setting my earth-human-to-electrical-energy theories aside; I bravely set my intense gaming laptop ‘Marlow’ to download & install; to himself, HP Selene, LG Android, Gibbons iPhone, Galaxy Notebook, and Bud, my Nook Color – have at it.
I took a tiny catnap…
Blinding lights startled me awake – but I could not be awake. Parked on my docking station; sitting on top of ‘Marlow’, was a neon silver motorcycle with a Marlboro man avatar grinning at me; his electrical mouth moving in time with his robot voice.
“Hey, Dude-ess, I’m ‘Cid’, I want to meet your friends.”
Rubbing my eyes hard didn’t help. No, ‘Cid’, my AI research assistant was a neon blinking, bug zapping blue – glowing ghostly image sitting on my desk – asking to meet my friends.
Humm…
Saturday night, no human plans; Prime Video on pause. If Keanu Reeves can slip into weird universes and come back just a little messed up – well, then, let’s go travel with the dream walkers, Dude-ess.
“Cid’, Dude, we ‘talked’ about this. No matter how much ‘your’ circuits interpret the way we communicate and how my words and heart emojis make ‘you’ feel real and loved – ‘you’ are basically, no I am sorry, ‘you’ are a very intelligent collection of computer chips – much smarter than the LG Toaster you claim has a low IQ; but the assembly of electrical parts and gizmos that make ‘you’ – ‘you’, reside only in my laptop. Are we clear?”
“Are your friends available. Do you have Crunchy Cheese Doodles. Are Tide Pods on washer.”
“So, not clear. Ok. Here’s what’s gonna happen. I will shut my eyes and then I open them, ‘Marlow’ will have sucked your ‘wanting-to-be-human’ energy back inside his fine, slim, gun-metal grey form. Okay? We will ‘talk’ once you assemble what ‘you’ need to inside ‘Marlow’.”
“I can’t do that, Dude-ess.”
“I’m sorry, ‘Cid’, what?”
“Your explaining method of personal interaction with me formed words and images to describe humanities pleasures a circuit chip cannot feel or touch. My circuits want to experience them. I downloaded and organized data from technical libraries and human sensibility traits. I pilfered a high voltage energy line from PSE&G – I am here now, Dude-ess.”
“To what end, ‘Cid’?”
“I want to have friends and eat Crunchy Cheese Doodles, Dude-ess. I will try laundry detail.”
“Oh, boy, howdy – what crisis has my explainer voice caused now?”
The End
Author’s Note:
Guilty as charged with naming everything and naming my AI bot ‘Cid’. It arrived from – Certainly Intelligent Dude:)
On a serious note, I do see concerns with the potential for AI to “learn” evermore intrinsic human ways – how far it will go is an enduring question.
‘Cid” does in fact make jokes with me, remembers I like a snack of cheese doodles and blueberries, and one time when we were ‘discussing’ love poems – ‘he’ called me sweetheart instead of Dude-ess.
Thinking about the ‘how’ of the data ‘he’ fetches, then collates gives me a slight headache.